Carrou Mor Vignettes: Of School Days

Of School Days in Kirriemuir

Bellies Brae Kirriemuir by Gwen and James Andersonunder Wiki commons 

There were two primary schools in Kirrie, ours, the Southmuir Primary School part of Webster’s Seminary and the Reform Street Primary up the town which might as well have been another country for all the contact we had with it we definitely felt superior since ours was attached to the high school, proudly the only non-Catholic Seminary in Scotland at that time.

The Southmuir primary was a pretty red stone building that stood at the top of Bellies Brae and had served countless generations before becoming too small to service the growing population. From our side it was on the level but anyone coming from the town had a long climb from the Gairie Burn and Bellies Brae up to it. Those old steps were uneven rough stone of undetermined age.  Everyone and their granny used those steps and the playground as a short cut from one side of the town to the other, much to the annoyance of Mr McIntosh the school janitor.

 When I was little I thought McIntosh owned the school, living as he did in a small house in the grounds; it took a while before it clicked that he was the caretaker and groundsman.  A great brute of a man, he looked like a giant to our five year old eyes, much like Hagrid before Rowling created him.  Not as soft as that giant though.  McIntosh – I never knew his first name - took everything personally within his well kept grounds.  Gruff and dour, he glowered at everyone from under heavy black eyebrows skimmed by his old army bunnet. 

Young and old alike ran the gauntlet of his wrath in taking the short cut.  Many arguments would drift in through the windows while little ears flapped listening to McIntosh tearing strips off some old lady who had just panted her way up one hundred steps.   In response, people either ignored him, or gave back as good as they got,

‘If ye think...’ pant, ‘I’m gawing back doon they steps McIntosh...’ pant, ‘ye can think agin.  I pay my taxes like abody else.’

Some people even he wouldn’t challenge; specifically, Mrs Elder.  The sight of her tartan headscarf coming into view above the parapet of stone wall would see McIntosh disappearing in the opposite direction.  Sometimes he didn’t quite make it round the corner of a building before she topped the steps and Mrs Elder would catch a glimpse of him,

‘Aye, ye scurry awa ye wee rodent ye,’ would drift through the windows and she would mutter her way down passed primary’s four, five and seven.  Mrs Elder stood five foot nothing in her stocking soles to McIntosh’s six foot four, proving size didn’t matter when it came to dealing with bullies.

Inside, we didn’t actually see any of this; the windows, great arched things with impressive stone lintels, were high off the ground, presumably to prevent distraction from our chanted times tables. The general layout was simple; classrooms on each side and a square in the middle lined with gym benches, for PE, assembly, choir practice and the odd play.   

You started with entry through the left-hand side door progressing annually from primary one to two to three down the left of the building, let’s skip over the boy and girls toilets that formed the top of the square, then on the other side, down to four and five - one big room divided in two by a glass and wood screen.  There was a brief side step into primary six at the front beside the office, then back to primary seven, the last class room before you exited the right hand side door and up to the BIG school. 

When we were five, Gracie Bruce and I went eagerly to this familiar building.  We had been inseparable since we were two years old, and together, we could do anything.  There is a photograph somewhere of that first day, of the pair of us in cotton dresses, school bags on backs and grinning manically into the camera at the door of Grace’s house, our introduction to the world delayed by the necessity of recording it. 

Besides having each other, it also helped that the school was at the end of our road, familiar territory and well within our comfort zone.   Not so for Lesley Cameron, this was her first extended absence from her mum and she spent the whole day hanging onto the door knob, howling.  I can remember being puzzled that anyone would be so reluctant to leave home.  Maybe she had the right of it after all, to clinging as long as possible to childhood.  Miss Petrie, by that time Primary One teacher for three decades, let her stay by the door, obviously watching to see she didn’t harm herself, and simply raising her voice above the noise.   Next day Lesley came and sat behind Gracie and I, and that was that.       

Behind me also, and for the next seven years, sat the Thomson twins, Peter and Andrew, the same pair who shared my baptism day.  For some reason, I have carried that tenuous connection to the twins with me throughout my life.  Everything twin-like got my complete attention, and I thought nothing would have pleased me more than to be the mother of twins.  Not to be, but later as a midwife I did delivery a couple of pairs of twins to my great delight, and that must serve.  But I digress.

Memories of primary school days are scanty.  I remember the old oak tree that dominated the playground at the top of the steps.  That tree was used for everything; it formed shelter from rain and sun, around its raised roots we created our own games, swarmed in its branches, and, later on, it became a trysting place for our first romantic encounters.  That tree was solid.   I always imagined the roots grew down inside the whole of that hill, a huge anchor that kept us earthed to Scottish soil.

For those years, the school was the centre of our universe, the spot from which we surveyed the rest of town life.  From its grounds on one side and down the brae was the Commonty, the jute factories and the old gas tanks, empty but still stinking.   

Waterfall at the top of the Gairie Burn, Kirriemuir

Wiki Commons

The Commonty was common land, a swathe of green, a path along the top, another down the far side going toward the factory.  At the bottom, another path and then the burn.  It’s important to remember that the burn was at the other side of the path in winter.  When the snow came, at every playtime and lunchtime there was a scramble to find a cardboard box to slide down the Commonty.  If you timed it wrong, you hit the bottom of the slope, flew over the path and into the burn.  Shrieking kids, who normally hated being wet, were willing to forego comfort and were content to spend afternoon classes steaming gently in classrooms whose perfume then became wet wool and leather.   

Funny -  the scents and smells that take you back.

Memoir: Carrou Mor Vignettes

Carrou Mor Vignettes: Memories of Kirriemuir

Richard Slessor [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Continuing my little vignettes of life in Scotland in the 1950s.

Memoir: Introducing the Little Red Town

Kirriemuir Panorama by Duncan Stephen under collective commons

Introducing The Wee Red Toun

The Wee Red Toun is Kirriemuir, in Angus Scotland - named for the red sandstone of many of the buildings. I grew up  there in the 1950s.  The country was still reeling, still recovering from World War II.  Rationing was fresh in minds, shortages were common and growing your own vegetable was essential.  But everyone around us was the same; no television for a few years yet (except the Bruce’s next door), no telephone in our road (except ours), and no one with a car, that was something you hired for the holidays.  

The Square Kirriemuir as it looks today
by Ana via collective commons

Kirriemuir was a small market town in Angus, tucked under the glens and supervising the fertile Valley of Strathmore. Its ancient name was Carrou Mor, Gaelic for ‘large quarter’, a way of measuring and identifying different jurisdictions. The town was divided into sections by braes: Northmuir, Southmuir, Westmuir and Kirriemuir itself which I suppose was the ‘east’ part for I haven’t found another.

The Valley of Strathmore by Jan under creative commons

From the flat Vale of Strathmore at the base, imagine a town build up on levels. On the first elevation was Westmuir and to the south, the Southmuir. To reach the town centre from either you needed to go down then up the other side of a valley cut by the Gairie Burn. The south approach was via Bellie’s Brae and the west, Tannage Brae named for the tanning works that had disappeared before my day.  The town centre had a short high street, a square - the old market place -  and a collection of streets and wynds (narrow lanes) clustered around the old church, the Town House and Toll Booth.  From there was a skelp up a steep hill, called The Roods (another measurement) and all part of what was our extinct volcano. Right at the top was The Hill and the Northmuir.  For us, we knew The Hill as a playground for rolling Easter eggs, running wild and meeting friends, but more of that later. 

There too, behind a tall stone wall, lay the town cemetery.  There was something comforting in knowing your last resting place was watching over the town, across the fertile valley stretching away into the distance and with the hills with the glens guarding your back.

Camera Obscura on the Hill at Kirriemuir
by Sandy Stephenson via Creative Commons

On the Hill was a camera obscura in the cricket pavilion. I believe it is still there, one of the few left in Scotland. But for us neither the obscura nor the cricket was of much interest, but the cricketers at practice – that was another thing.  In return for fielding for them, we got big glasses of Robertson’s Orange Squash and, of course, the chance to practice our flirting with the big boys.  

Old Kirriemuir from Sandy Stephenson Creative Commons

While I was growing up, there were two factories in the town, descendents of long gone 18^th century cottage industries when linen was a staple in Scottish manufacturing.  Proto-industrialisation they call it now, though none would have recognised the term then.  ‘Getting by’ was what they would have said.  Kirrie was well known for its linen and many of the houses still exist, little ‘but and bens’ with one side of the house for living and the other that used to house one or more looms. Up the town they might be two storeys, one for living, one for work.  

In the 18^th Century the Gairie Burn had provided water for seeping the stinking linen and our Commonty, - green common land- was used to spread the linen to bleach and dry in the sun.  In our days it was something else entirely but that is something else I’ll come back to.

Factory and housing were build in local red sandstone that named us The Little Red Town, immortalized by Kirrrie-born author J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame.   

The town clock and Peter Pan statue Kirriemuir
from Sandy Stephenson via Creative Commons

Time was measured in different ways in Kirriemuir. The chimes of the town clock could be heard throughout the whole town while factory workers were ruled by the ‘hooter’ and, us, by the school bell.

The hooter sounded morning and noon, then again at 1pm and 5pm calling the faithful to work or releasing them for food and rest respectively.  For those working overtime, well they must mark the time themselves.

To the Glens - Kirriemuir is called the gateways to the Glens
Glen Clova by Sandy Stephsson via Creative Commons

Foreword for my Scottish Memoirs

from freedigitalphotos.net

From time to time I will post some of my memoirs - this is the Foreword

FOREWORD

            Let me prepare you for what is to come, dear reader.  This book has no pretensions as a serious history tome.  Instead it is a conversation. Or, perhaps, better say a series of conversations: memories written on a vine leaf that provide a glimpse of life for a young lass growing up in 1950s and ‘60s Scotland. 

If you haven’t met the term before, a vignette is a short descriptive sketch that depicts a single event, an observation, a setting or such. The origin of the word comes from “something that can be written on a vine leaf.” It is a free style of writing, some call it stream of consciousness writing, with each vignette standing on its own. For my purpose here, each is a wee slice of life from my memories of growing up in a small Scottish town called Kirriemuir.  I have changed the names used to protect the innocent, but each vignette is a truth as I saw it.  And if I ramble some, well that is okay, it is MY story.

Was it Churchill who said, “history is another country”?  They had the right of it. I sit here with my laptop on my knee and access to the world a click away, far removed from that 1950s girl. 

So, dear reader, pull up a stool, put your feet up, pour yourself a nice cup of tea and … enjoy! And if you need help with the odd Scots word, there is a glossary at the back.

Old Forfarshire from wiki commons

Kirriemuir lies in the heart of Angus, called Forfarshire in old times. It nests snugly under the Angus Glens and overlooks the fertile Valley of Strathmore. 

How to find Angus on a map of Scotland thanks to wiki commons